Catholic schools offer ‘that other dimension,’ CSJ teacher says

(Originally published in The Register of the Salina Diocese, Jan. 29, 2010)

By Doug Weller
The Register

SALINA — After teaching 40 years in the Diocese of Salina, Sister Pauline Kukula says her love for education and her students hasn’t diminished.

Neither has her support for Catholic schools.

“We have good public schools here, but we have that other dimension,” she said.

That dimension — obviously — is a Catholic environment and religious instruction.

Catholic schools in the diocese will be celebrating that difference next week during Catholic Schools Week.

As the junior high religion teacher at Sacred Heart Junior-Senior High School in Salina, Sister Pauline is intimately involved in her students’ catechesis.

A Sister of St. Joseph of Concordia, she teaches six classes a day, a total of about 100 students, plus is in charge of daily prayer services and other activities.

“Religion class is an important part of their day, as is the Catholic environment of the school,” Sister Pauline said, and she credits her fellow faculty members and staff for providing that.

Junior high is a great age to teach, she said, calling her students “delightful.”

“They’re good kids. St. Mary’s Grade School lays a marvelous foundation. What they get there, they come to me, and I carry on,” she said.

The challenge, she noted, is trying to reach every student.

“There are kids who are going to go to college, but a good percentage do not, so you have to teach the whole gamut. You have to give different prayer experiences, different learning experiences,” she said.

“God’s infinite expressions are in all those kids. That’s a mystical experience. They all have different talents and expressions,” she added.

She’s still teaching because “you know where you’re called. … It’s a wonderful place here, to walk hand-in-hand with Christ every day,” she said.

Jan. 29, 2010: Peace can mean many things — and it’s worth defining, by Taylor Allen

Many people around the world do not know peace, and have never seen it in their lives. Peace is something that is said to exist in the United States of America, but as with freedom, it has its catches. It would help out the world if peace was exhibited every day, because then there wouldn’t be as much war or violence.

In my life there has always been the “American” peace, but along with freedom there are always catches. There are many laws that stand in the way of freedom. Many laws are in place to “keep the peace,” but these laws disrupt the peace that people enjoy, and with each law more freedom is taken away. Many of these laws do give citizens peace and freedom, though; it is a question of what matters most and what we are willing to give up.

Peace can have many meanings to different people, or maybe even many meanings to an individual person.

In my opinion, peace is a state of mind, an opinion and a feeling. People can be in a peaceful state of mind when they are happy or content; when they have nothing to worry or stress about, or even when they do, they don’t let it control them; they take their time and don’t feel overwhelmed. If someone or something is peaceful or at peace, it means there is no turmoil, no negativity and no hatred.

Peace occurs when there is happiness, honesty, love, sharing, when people swallow their pride and realize all people are equal. Peace is the feeling people get when they look at a sleeping baby, when they see the flag flying above troops as they hug their children for the first time after months away. These feelings can give people goose bumps and make them feel serene and happy to the point where nothing can bring them down.

Peace is different to every person; it can represent extreme happiness or quietly sitting in an open field gazing over the wild plants gracefully swaying in the quiet breeze.

To me, peace is when there is happiness and people aren’t being cast aside because they are different. God made us all different and that is how he has meant us to be. When I am at peace, the biggest smile I can display appears on my face, everything negative disappears and nothing beats the feeling.

— Taylor Allen is a student at Cloud County Community College.

Jan. 29, 2010: Peace can mean many things — and it’s worth defining, by Taylor Allen

Many people around the world do not know peace, and have never seen it in their lives. Peace is something that is said to exist in the United States of America, but as with freedom, it has its catches. It would help out the world if peace was exhibited every day, because then there wouldn’t be as much war or violence.

In my life there has always been the “American” peace, but along with freedom there are always catches. There are many laws that stand in the way of freedom. Many laws are in place to “keep the peace,” but these laws disrupt the peace that people enjoy, and with each law more freedom is taken away. Many of these laws do give citizens peace and freedom, though; it is a question of what matters most and what we are willing to give up.

Peace can have many meanings to different people, or maybe even many meanings to an individual person.

In my opinion, peace is a state of mind, an opinion and a feeling. People can be in a peaceful state of mind when they are happy or content; when they have nothing to worry or stress about, or even when they do, they don’t let it control them; they take their time and don’t feel overwhelmed. If someone or something is peaceful or at peace, it means there is no turmoil, no negativity and no hatred.

Peace occurs when there is happiness, honesty, love, sharing, when people swallow their pride and realize all people are equal. Peace is the feeling people get when they look at a sleeping baby, when they see the flag flying above troops as they hug their children for the first time after months away. These feelings can give people goose bumps and make them feel serene and happy to the point where nothing can bring them down.

Peace is different to every person; it can represent extreme happiness or quietly sitting in an open field gazing over the wild plants gracefully swaying in the quiet breeze.

To me, peace is when there is happiness and people aren’t being cast aside because they are different. God made us all different and that is how he has meant us to be. When I am at peace, the biggest smile I can display appears on my face, everything negative disappears and nothing beats the feeling.

— Taylor Allen is a student at Cloud County Community College.

Jan. 22, 2010: Bo Diddley offers a lesson in acceptance, by Olivia Leif

Everyone has heard the saying, “You can’t judge a book by its cover!” But really, how many of us truly live by it?

Probably very few of us can honestly say we do because before ever saying two words to someone we’ve just met, most people already have conjured up a preconceived notion of what we think the person is like. Our impressions are based on what the new person is wearing, their hair style, the car they drive or the way that they carry themselves. Often times, this initial look-over gives us a false sense of what the new individual is like, which can impede any chance of becoming acquainted.

When you’re tempted to “judge a book by its cover,” you need to take a deeper and closer look at what — or who — you are trying to judge; you need to look beneath the surface of someone. The “cover” of some professor, for example, may seem slow and awkward, but the “book” could be home to one of the brightest minds around.

The late Bo Diddley, in a 1962 hit song, plainly explained what the saying really means:

You can’t judge an apple by lookin’ at the tree
You can’t judge honey by lookin’ at the bee
You can’t judge a daughter by lookin’ at the mother
You can’t judge a book by lookin’ at the cover

Oh, can’t you see — whoa, you’ve misjudged me
I look like a farmer but I’m a lover
You can’t judge a book by lookin’ at the cover

If instead of automatically thinking you know everything about a person, try to get to know the him or her. By keeping an open mind and not judging, you have the possibility of becoming great friends.

The next time you see a new person walk through your door, follow Bo Diddley’s lyrics. Tear down the judgmental wall down to learn what’s inside the book.

— Olivia Leif is the daughter of Todd and Diane Leif. She is an eighth-grader at Concordia Junior High School.

Two sisters safe in Haiti aftermath

This news article was in Monday’s Globe and Mail of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, reporting on two sisters — including one Sister of St. Joseph of Toronto — who survived the Haiti earthquake and are determined to continue serving there.

Click HERE to read more.

Jan. 15, 2010: African story reminds us we each have a unique song, by Husch Hathorne

The “other” is an interesting concept in our community of Concordia.

Originally, in my white, heterosexual, physically-abled perspective, I conceptualized the “other” as some who didn’t fit that description — perhaps someone nonwhite in our largely white town, perhaps someone gay in our largely heterosexual town, maybe even someone physically or mentally challenged. But the person who drew my attention to the idea of an “other” in Concordia was someone not native to our soil.

They are the outsiders to our town. The new, the recently relocated, the Not-from-Here folks. The broader idea of the “other” is someone “not like us.”

By acknowledging that there is an “other,” we admit awareness of a core community in which we live, in which some are a part and some are not. The essence of any small town is the insulated, tightly knit community of its members — who by the nature of their inter-relatedness may be much happier than their city counterparts or more miserable than their small town counterparts, depending on real or perceived inclusion or exclusion.

When you are born into a small town, your community role is set for life by your socio-economic position. Your family name defines your potential and your economic/marital status seals the deal. This makes life for some of us a safe, comforting and thoroughly enjoyable experience. For others it can be a confining and at times narrow place to grow our dreams.

But dreams know no boundaries and many of our young people leave to pursue their hopes of greater opportunity through education and exposure to worlds where class and social status doesn’t define your place in the world.

How to change this? How to change a whole culture of exclusion? Concordia’s culture is described by some people as reserved, private, non-demonstrative and welcoming only upon proven community stature.

I recently received a forwarded email that told the story of an African tribe who upon welcoming newborn babies into their clan sang their individual song to them so that as the babies grew up they would always know their song of identity. The song would be sung to them on all-important occasions, wedding, initiation into adulthood, and certainly on the deathbed to sing the person into the next world with comfort.

The striking part about the practice of singing unique songs to each member of the community was that the song of identity was used as a way to help them correct themselves when they had lost their way — perhaps behaving in anti-social ways. The song was used to gently remind the offenders who they were, so that they could regain their balance and come back into right thinking and acting. The idea is that by remembering who we are, we each have a sense of responsibility and identity that can bring us into focus again — not by punishing us through isolation but by accepting us with love and remembrance of who we are. It reminds us who we are connected to, which we all forget from time to time.

In our non-African culture, we can try to hear each other’s unique song and we can try for less judgment of newcomers, remembering gentle notes that lull us back to knowing who we are, and greater acceptance of each other whether new, established or relocated community members. We can sing, and listen, too.

I like to think of it as a way to understand and illuminate the need to hear each other’s song every day, especially at a time of renewal and New Year.

— Husch Hathorne, LSCSW is a therapist and a transitioning social worker with Catholic Charities of Salina. She was born in Concordia and is relocating to Alaska to hear her song sung daily as she joins her new husband, the source of her best forwarded emails ever.

Special features await Messenger readers

The January 2010 Messenger is available beginning today (Jan. 12) and features 20 pages of news and information about the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia.

As is tradition, the special women who will celebrate jubilees are featured in this edition, with portraits of each and a reflection written just for her anniversary. For 2010, there are 18 jubilarians representing 1,060 years of service to God and the dear neighbor.

A very special feature in the January edition — which is published during National Vocation Awareness Week — is a colorful palette of reflection designed by Sister Janet Lander of Manna House of Prayer. It’s created to be taken out of the newspaper and saved.

Other articles discuss the ongoing apostolic visitation, the renovation of the Neighbor to Neighbor center, several exciting upcoming events and other news of interest to our friends and supporters.

This edition is available in three PDFs that you can download by clicking the links below:

Pages 1-9 (includes the jubilarians’ reflections)
Pages 10-11 (color centerspread)
Pages 12-20 (includes other news and “Homecomings”)

If you aren’t on our mailing list and would like to receive a copy of The Messenger, just send your mailing address to mbryant@csjkansas.org

To support publication of The Messenger and help defray our mailing costs, please consider making a donation through Amazon Simple Pay, simply by clicking on the Donate button:

January 2010: ‘Renewal’ leads to a God-driven movement

EDITOR’S NOTE: In each issue of The Messenger, we’ve tried to keep our friends informed about the apostolic visitation that was announced in January 2009. As this issue goes to print, we are in a “holding pattern” — we responded to the Phase II questionnaire by the Nov. 21 deadline and have not heard back from the visitation office as to whether they received our response. As we wait to learn what the next phase will hold, Sister Marcia Allen — president of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia — offers her thoughts on the history of our community and who we are today.

By SISTER MARCIA ALLEN

The apostolic visitation of religious communities of women in the United States has initiated a good deal of soul-searching on the part of those communities.

Have we failed in the single enterprise to which we are committed? Have we not advanced in our commitment to union with God and neighbor through works of service to humanity?

Those questions quickly segue into another: How has our concern for both God’s desire for creation and our living out that desire actually created in us adaptations that make us recognizable to ourselves, but not necessarily recognizable to the general public whom we serve or to Rome, which authorizes our existence?

In the 17th century, the only au-thorized religious life for women was within a cloister. It was a closed world in which women pursued holiness through the severe discipline of isolation from the world. Yet small groups of women in southern France began to gather together in order to feed the hungry, counsel the fainthearted, visit the sick and bury the dead. Many of these tiny groups — including the Sisters of St. Joseph — developed into religious communities of women.

A Jesuit, Jean-Pierre Medaille, passed on to the first Sisters of St. Joseph much of his Jesuit heritage in the “Rule” he wrote for the fledgling congregation of women, enabling them to lead a life of service in their world and yet be “real” religious. This was unheard of in the official tradition of the Catholic Church at that time. It was an adaptation for which there was little precedent and certainly no permission.

But conditions among the people of south central France were so dire that the bishop where the Sisters of St. Joseph emerged could see that these groups of women would guarantee the survival of the culture in which they lived. Some 150 years later, these same French sisters were invited to the United States to provide Catholic education and health care for a burgeoning immigrant population. Government did not provide any type of services, and schools, hospitals and orphanages were viewed as the responsibility of private agencies and organizations.

Six Sisters of St. Joseph came to the St. Louis area in 1836 to begin schools. Their first assignment was a school for the deaf. They quickly drew new members from the American population. They spread throughout the United States and by 1851 were even in Canada. Their institutions became models for the establishment of comparable secular institutions. Their success continued well into the 20th century.

As state governments began to develop and implement certification requirements, many sisters advanced their education and training to meet those requirements. That professionalism began to vie with, if not replace, the apostolic thrust of many of the religious institutes of women.

By the 1950s it was clear that most religious institutes of women needed to revise their approach to their educational and health care institutions. They needed lay boards, additional financial support and educated women for staff. At the same time, the United
States was beginning a cultural revolution that shifted the vision of women. They increasingly found new choices for a successful, fulfilling life of leadership. They no longer had to choose a religious life to find those possibilities.By the 1960s and 1970s it was
clear those factors were contributing to the decline in the number of women entering religious communities. Ultimately, they did not have enough members to continue staffing their own institutions; they began to move the administration, governance, and often the ownership to other entities, many of which were secular. At the same time the Second Vatican Council — Vatican II — decreed that religious communities must renew and adapt. We were to examine our original charism, study the Gospel and adapt to the needs of the times.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia took this mandate seriously and in 1969 had what was called a “renewal Chapter.” This included in-depth study of the charism and the original inspiration from the 17th century. It also included serious study of Sacred Scripture. All of this necessitated a deeper spiritual life — one that could support the new professionalism that the members had achieved.

As a result, our sisters became even more serious about the deepening of our original commitment — union with God and others without distinction.

Forty years later, what has happened?

The community has changed. We have adapted. The Congregation is now more faithful to our original purpose — meeting the needs of a world that is searching for meaning. This leads to a multitude of different services — ranging from care for the earth to advocacy for the unborn, from local engagement to global concern, from work within the
Church to the Church at work in the world.

Yet we are united in our one mission — to enable people to retain their dignity, their relationship with God, self and others, and to be truly human.In adapting like this, we have left our institutions to the care of others and have become relevant in today’s world by reconstituting ourselves as a “social movement organization” (to borrow the phrase from sociologist Patricia Wittberg).

In fact, author Mary Cresp titled her description of the worldwide Communities of St. Joseph “The Joseph Movement.” She describes us as flexible, tensile, adaptable, as finding strength and unity in diversity. Easily responsive to need, we move to where we can most effectively respond to what it is that people and earth need. And we accomplish this through attention to what is happening locally and globally. Ours is a pragmatic approach — counseling services, spiritual direction, food distribution, rent and medicine subsidies, child care, education in schools or parish or civic programs, public free clinics, immigration reform, justice advocacy, energy conservation, organization of civic forums, advocacy for public policy that addresses life issues, and many other services to meet specific needs.

Today, we are diversely engaged in our world. We understand ourselves as one with the world, not removed from it. We suffer its pain and we are glad participators in its triumphs. We partner with others who share our dreams to create projects that we can turn over to them and then move on to new partnerships.

All of this makes us look very different than the religious community of the 1940s and ’50s when we were at the height of our institutionalized form.

So, in this second decade of the 21st century, Rome asks: What has become of you?!

We respond: We have become who we are meant to be in our contemporary world — a religious movement that answers a call to be completely given to what God desires, a self-giving community of love. We do this in our limited human way, but we do it with our whole heart.

Chamber honors sisters’ work in 2009

Citing projects from the Concordia Year of Peace and Civility Pledge to the community garden and the new Neighbor to Neighbor center, the Concordia Chamber of Commerce has named the Sisters of St. Joseph as 2009 volunteer of the year.


Sister Marcia Allen accepted the honor on behalf of the congregation at the chamber’s 83rd Annual Awards Dinner Saturday evening (Jan. 9). Sister Marcia, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia, thanked the chamber for the award and the community for the opportunities to work together on a wide variety of projects.


“Every time we are able to help, we are blessed in return,” Sister Marcia told the crowd in the dining room of the Concordia American Legion Golf Course. “This has been our home for 126 years, and we are privileged to help you care for it.”

The honor — officially, “The 2009 Leon Gennette Award for Community Service, Volunteer of the Year,” named for the late Concordian who served as executive director of the chamber and was widely known for his community volunteer activities — recognizes a number of projects that sisters have been involved in, both as individuals and as a congregation:


• The new Neighbor to Neighbor center, which will be housed in a building now being renovated in downtown Concordia, to serve women and women with children.

• The community forums that have been held throughout 2009, to help Concordia residents come together to identify problems and find solutions.

• The Concordia Year of Peace, which began in September as a 16-month effort to focus on nonviolence and cooperation through a range of workshops, speakers and other activities.

• The Civility Pledge, which has grown out of the Year of Peace as a way to encourage civil public discourse.

• Partnerships during the Kansas Sampler Festival and other events to open the historic Nazareth Motherhouse for tours.

• The community organic garden now being planned for a 100-by-200-foot plot on the northeast corner of the Motherhouse property.

In addition to all the other projects during the year, explained Barbara Shunn as she read the sisters’ nomination, “Now they’re going to allow us to plow up part of their front yard for a community garden.”

Jan. 8, 2010: A friend teaches about the gift of giving, by Audrey Stiles

Giving is wonderful. Everyone tells me that giving is better than receiving. And while the Christmas season is about giving and being around friends and family, it is not the only time we can give.

I have an elderly friend named Melva who has taught me much about giving.

I love to give my time to visit her. She always gives her time and love. Melva was my mentor during church conformation. We had fun and got to be really close friends. She took me out to eat, we went on walks, and so much more. She helped me get to know God, and she taught me how great giving can be.

Melva has given so much to the church. She and her husband, Burton, started a church at Lovewell Lake, Kan., more than 50 years ago. Melva loves that little church that used to be a schoolhouse. Every year she is so excited to go and help serve God at the Lovewell church. She loves that church so much that even when her husband died, she continued serving there. As she got older and couldn’t drive anymore, she still didn’t give up going to Lovewell.

I love going with Melva to Lovewell. Every Sunday is a treat. There are either musicians to share their music or there is a speaker. Melva also has taught Sunday school there and I love to hear the stories she tells about it. Everyone at church is willing to give her a ride from Concordia to Lovewell; it’s the least we can do to give back what she has given to the church.

Melva has taught me a lot about giving. She is such a caring person. She has influenced me to be a better person. Melva also taught me that I don’t have to give just at Christmas, but all year long. I love to give to my church and to the community in many ways. When Melva came into my life, my life changed entirely. I learned that giving is important and people are always grateful for what you have to give.

My life has been full of giving. People give me some of their precious time to teach me how to play an instrument or to help me with homework.

I am very glad that Melva has helped me learn that giving is such an amazing action.

— Audrey Stiles is a sophomore at Concordia High School and is the daughter of Chris and Melissae Stiles.

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